Interviews

Thomas Rain Crowe, of Tuckasegee, North Carolina, is a poet, translator, editor, publisher, anthologist and recording artist and author of thirty books of original and translated works. Here, he talks to Tuckasegee Reader co-publisher Bill Graham about his latest collection of poetry, Crack Light, just published by Wind Publications.
BG: You have an extensive and diverse list of titles. Where does Crack Light fit in terms of your body of work?
TRC: Interesting question–in that it doesn’t fit neatly or chronologically in...

ROBERTA: Authors sometimes dream that a current event will dovetail with their book's launch and bring it to prominence. This is not the case for Susan Cerulean, the co-editor of Unspoiled: Writers Speak for Florida's Coast, a collection of thirty-six essays and poems contributed by writers including Connie May Fowler, Janisse Ray and many others. For Cerulean and her co-authors, the BP oil disaster on April 20 occurred just as their book is about to be launched, and embodies their...

Jack Temple Kirby presented the keynote speech for the Southern Nature Project conference “Chattooga: Wild River, Real and Imagined” on April 21, 2005. We offer it here in memoriam.
WILDERNESS AND THE SOUTHERN MIND
To follow Bartram’s trail upstream, past Tugaloo,
to cross the Chattooga River at Earl’s Ford,
to go up the Warwoman Valley,
up past the cascades & bridalveils of Finney Creek,
up along the Continental Divide
between Rabun Bald & Hickory Knob,
is to crawl,...

Writer and keyboardist Chuck Leavell introduces this video series on the Mother Nature Network entitled, Love of the Land.
http://www.mnn.com/mnntv/love-of-the-land
"You know, when I am not out rocking and rolling with the Rolling Stones or some of the other musical artists that I have been so privileged to work with throughout my career, or maybe working on my own solo projects, you’re very likely to find me right here on our own family forest, Charlane Plantation, in central Georgia.
And here, I...

If you were to exit Interstate 85 in Spartanburg, South Carolina on your way to or from some point of greater interest, it’s not likely that much would capture your attention and draw you in. Big box stores and cookie-cutter franchise restaurants line the city’s main street running from east to west, flashing the same endless string of familiar names—Wal-Mart, Applebees, Home Depot—and offering up the same products available in any other town, off any other highway, in any other...

In many ways, Thomas Rain Crowe has had two careers. One he has spent traveling the world, writing and translating poetry. Twenty-five years ago, though, he returned to North Carolina where, with the help of the land outside his door, he has rediscovered the joy of local activism and the beauty of the place in which he was raised.
An internationally published and recognized writer, Crowe is the author of more than twenty books, including The Laugharne Poems (published in Wales...

Matteo Meschiari was born in Modena, Italy in 1968. Poet and essayist, he conducts research in geography, philosophy, and anthropology. A graduate of the University of Bologna, with advanced degrees from the Université de Bourgogne and the Université Charles De Gaulle Lille 3, he gives public lectures and leads workshops in universities on prehistoric art, landscape in science and literature, and contemporary poetry.
Matteo also is the son-in-law of the late James Kilgo, one of the founding authors of the...

Florida landscape photographer and naturalist, Jeff Ripple and I both grew up in Florida—he in the wild southwest and me in the manicured, overly landscaped southeast. As an expatriate Floridian, I am always eager to discuss the beauty and nuances of my home state, the tangle of scrub and swamp and woods that is always in jeopardy of the developer’s heavy hand.
Ripple, uses a Wisner 4X5 wooden field camera and large-format transparency film to “bring together the dynamic...

First published in The Flagpole, Athens, Georgia, May 2, 2007.
The fate of Georgia’s coast has been in the political spotlight recently like never before. The final hours of this year’s legislative session at the Georgia General Assembly (now over, but for the special session to work out the state budget) saw a bill about development on Jekyll Island making its way to a difficult compromise that will preserve the island’s undeveloped south end for now. (If you missed it, you...

Throughout his youth, Franklin Burroughs explored the woodlands and swamps of Conway, South Carolina. In his books “The River Home,” “Billy Watson’s Croker Sack,” and most recently, “Confluence: Merrymeeting Bay,” he has continued to explore landscapes, in his words, “full of hiding places, where potential surprises lurked.” Burroughs, who has lived in the Merrymeeting Bay area of Maine for more than thirty years, discusses the south, nature writing, and the essential strangeness of the world.
Jones: What is...

Janisse Ray grew up on the grounds of a Georgia junkyard, amid the longleaf pine and wiregrass. However, she does not focus on wreckage and waste, but on doing what she can to reverse the destruction of the natural world that she loves. There is hope, grace, and determination in each of her books, which include Pinhook: Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land, Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home, and Ecology of a Cracker Childhood.
Jones:...

Jesslyn Shields recounts meeting Dr. Eugene P. Odum, known as the "Father of Modern Ecology." Ms. Shields now lives in Athens, Georgia, where she serves as watershed support coordinator for the Georgia River Network.
The Father of Modern Ecology drove a white Ford Taurus. He owned two of them: identical but for the wear. The one he picked me up in the day we met was "the grocery-getter," and he handled it as if its last trip to the supermarket was...

Floridian Bill Belleville’s essays, books, and films might lead his audiences to the swamp, the sea, or the jungle. He has toured the world, recording his travels and revealing remote places. Yet, his writing does not only highlight his adventures to exotic locales; it reveals a vision of the world that is clear and honest.
Jones: You mention on the Southern Nature Project website that you need to have a "gut relationship" with a place. Can you elaborate...

Lynn Coulter is a native Southerner and the author of Gardening with Heirloom Seeds: Tried-and-True Flowers, Fruits, & Vegetables for a New Generation (University of North Carolina Press 2006).
Q: What are heirloom seeds?
Lynn Coulter: Heirlooms are flowers, fruits, and vegetables that have been around for fifty years or more, living antiques that have been passed down from one generation to the next. Heirloom seeds also grow true to type, unlike the seeds of modern hybrids.
Q: How...

(Note: This interview with John Terres was made shortly before his death in 2006. The photo shows Mark Kutner and Dr. Terres.)
John Terres is known throughout our community as a highly intelligent gentleman with an unrivaled caring
disposition. Fortunately, as John approaches his 100th year, I am able to say that he has been able to
touch the lives of literally millions of people in countless communities through his work as a scientist,
author, and naturalist. To aptly discuss the life of John...

In the late spring of 2005, southern nature writers John Lane and Thomas Rain Crowe traveled together to the home of ecologian Thomas Berry, at Wells Spring Assisted Living Center in Greensboro, North Carolina. At 91 years of age, Father Thomas Berry is one of the most profound, if not most celebrated, spokespersons for the preservation of the environment in the English-speaking world. His books The Dream of the Earth, The Universe Story and The Great Work are a liturgy...

Janet Lembke, often referred to as an “acclaimed Southern naturalist”, is the author of Dangerous Birds, River Time, Despicable Species, Skinny-Dipping, and The Quality of Living. Her essays and poetry have appeared in publications such as Audubon, Sierra, the Southern Review, and The New York Times Book Review. Ms. Lembke is also a translator of classical Greek and Latin texts and an avid gardener. In her writing and in her life, Ms. Lembke takes great joy in...

This interview appeared in Summer 2002 (vol. 29, no. 4) of Appalachian Journal and is reprinted here by permission of the Journal. Ms. Dykeman died at her home in Asheville, North Carolina on December 22, 2006.

“Where once there were jagged, forested ridgelines,” writes Erik Reece for Harper’s magazine, “now there is only a series of plateaus, staggered grey shelves where grass struggles to grow in crushed rock and shale.”
Kentucky-born poet and essayist Erik Reece went to Robinson Forest in Kentucky, intending to write poems and to expose his students to some of the most diverse wilderness in the United States. To write about the forest he loved, he discovered, he must first write about...